Nicolas Ruel was born in Montreal in 1973. He began his studies in film and international relations before undertaking extensive travels, during which time he would obtain his training as a photographer. Ruel has been presented in solo and collective exhibitions all over the world. Using his signature medium, stainless steel, on which to print his large scale works, Nicolas Ruel has received much acclaim, for his unique approach to photography.

Nicolas Ruel’s most recent project, projet 8 secondes depicts urban civilizations captured by the photographer in sustained intervals of eight seconds. Nicolas Ruel has explored evocative cities, such as Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Beijing and Sydney, in both day and night time settings.

The long exposition technique employs cinematographic processes by condensing each picture into eight second micrometers. This duration period constitutes key moments that are united in a single photographic element, resembling the condensation process of dreams. During this apertural travelling shot, the photographer seeks to magnify the actions and spectacle of the city, in a balance between dream and reality. This journey is an attempt to reveal the relationship between urban man and architecture; editing, moment by moment, the city’s urban pulse.

The juxtaposition of two or more pictures into a single image forms an inverted vision of the city. As a result, famous architectural structures can be merged with cloud breaches, or an freeway with a futuristic railway station, thus creating new a visual communication. These appropriate themselves as the imaginary cities of the photographer through his feverish photographic gestures.

This series, exclusively printed on stainless steel, benefits from the intrinsic and intense luminosity of its support material. Focusing on the concept of the Monumental, this unified approach creates parallels between urbanism, architecture and the people; entities that become indivisible within those eight tumultuous seconds.